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The long contagion
of the "Derby" hat arrived: one season the crown of this hat would be
a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its
bootjack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and "congress
gaiters"; and these were played through fashions that shaped them now
with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of racing
shells.
Trousers with a crease were considered plebeian; the crease proved
that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was "ready-made";
these betraying trousers were called "hand-me-downs," in allusion to
the shelf. In the early 'eighties, while bangs and bustles were
having their way with women, that variation of dandy known as the
"dude" was invented: he wore trousers as tight as stockings, dagger-
pointed shoes, a spoon "Derby," a single-breasted coat called a
"Chesterfield," with short flaring skirts, a torturing cylindrical
collar, laundered to a polish and three inches high, while his other
neckgear might be a heavy, puffed cravat or a tiny bow fit for a
doll's braids.


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